Current "best practice" suggestion

For videos with just a little text, http://www.universalsubtitles.org can be used as is: one person links to the video and creates the transcription in a few easy steps. The current (registered) user experience goes like this:

You listen to a few seconds and type that text, and then another time-segment until it's done.

You probably need to go through the video a few times until all the text is typed.

You then synchronise it with the sound by pressing the down-arrow every time a new phrase is spoken.

Finally, you publish the subtitles.

Later, other people, usually one person per language, can create the translations within universalsubtitles itself.

Subtitles and translations can be improved later by others.

For longer videos, a step by step procedure appears preferable:

First, use tools like piratepad to create a transcription, perhaps cooperatively like we did with a video by Hans Rosling at http://piratepad.net/mCRNBbSGfl

Once the transcription is in place, it may be placed on a wikipage for others to refine, if some words are not clear enough.

In any case, the transcription is then split in short lines so that they will display well as subtitles.

Translation is currently done by one translator per language like it was done with smaller videos. Cooperative translations might be done by porting the text to google's translate tool (as a .srt file) or to piratepad (as plain text).

As usual, subtitles and translations can be improved later by others.

A number of extremely exciting improvements are currently in the works. LucasG 01:07, 22 December 2010 (PST)